


Five Things That Suck About Being A Hunter, And One That Doesn't

by ChibiFrieza



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 18:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiFrieza/pseuds/ChibiFrieza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life as a Winchester is kind of terrible, except when it's all right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things That Suck About Being A Hunter, And One That Doesn't

**Author's Note:**

> Set Season 3-ish.

1.

Money’s always tight, even when it isn’t, which means the motels always suck.

Sometimes they luck out, and the sheets are clean and the toilet looks like it might have seen a scrub sometime in the last year. 

Sometimes they don’t.

The beds are always too short for Sam, and the _showers_. Never mind temperature, even though a cold shower in January when it’s four in the morning and you just barely managed to kill the freaking Beast of Bray Road before it tore out your brother’s pancreas is not anybody’s idea of a good time. No, really, the icing on _that_ cake is how the shower heads are never, never high enough.

It’s bad enough for Dean. Dean has to crane at a funny angle to get his hair rinsed out properly, and that’s a nuisance, but Sam, who should know better by now, still hits his head about once every four times. Not that Dean makes a habit of knowing anything about the way his brother showers, but the yelp is unmistakable.

Besides which, who the hell thinks to match the wallpaper to the lamps?

 

2\. 

Dean knows a lot of sounds he wishes he didn’t know.

He knows the sound of fists meeting flesh, of bones breaking and of joints dislocating. He knows the exact difference, in fact, between these sounds traveling through air from another body and the sounds traveling sick and instantaneous through his own.

He knows every single variant of his brother in pain, from the low-level startled gasp or grunt to the full-blown shriek of uncontainable agony.

These are things he wishes he had no cause to know.

Since he does, he uses the knowledge as well as he can. It helps if you can tell immediately how bad the damage is.

 

3\. 

They do the best they can, every time, because it’s how they were raised and it’s how they live.

It’s the only way they can deal with it, when their best isn’t enough. When the angry spirit claims that one more victim while they’re still in the graveyard. When the specter gives them the slip and they never pick it up again. When the little possessed girl walks off the side of the bridge before they can find her for the exorcism.

Some days, they can hardly live with themselves.

 

4\. 

Being stuck in a vehicle for extended periods of time with your brother, on a regular basis, is something that would try any fraternal relationship.

There is the obvious question of when to pull over and who gets to say. This was settled fairly conclusively when Sam threatened to just take a leak right there in the front seat and Dean realized the bluff was not his to call. He doesn’t have to like it. Or not give Sammy flak about his guinea-pig-sized bladder.

There is the issue of flatulence. Dean swears Sam was never this bad growing up. Rolling down the windows is not always an option.

It’s boring, and Dean doesn’t usually feel like talking and Sam doesn’t usually have anything interesting to talk about, but he tries anyway. Kid is never going to learn when to keep his mouth shut.

The music is kind of payback for everything else. In the beginning it’s because Dean really loves it, but it’s fun to watch Sam’s pained expressions out of the corner of his eye. 

Dean is the worst backseat driver in the world, which is why it’s a good thing that he usually only lets Sam drive when he has to sleep. Also, that way, he can claim a legitimate grievance against Sam’s music and get it turned down, at the very least. Sleep trumps driver’s privilege and both of them know it.

 

5\. 

In addition to the list of sounds Dean wishes he didn’t know, there is an entire host of things he wishes he hadn’t ever seen, smelled, or in any way experienced.

What kind of person knows how to get wyvern ichor out of a shirt? (Rinse it in cold water, just like blood, but add vinegar instead of salt.) What kind of person can take apart and reassemble a gun faster than a Marine? (He knows. Dad clocked him.) What kind of person drags his kid brother around the country hunting the monsters in other people’s closets? (Never mind that half the time it’s Sam dragging him. They’re in this together and there’s no getting around that.)

They dig up _graves_ on a regular basis. Digging up graves is _normal_ for them. And no, you never really get used to the smell, because it’s never quite the same.

They shouldn’t know what human entrails look like. They shouldn’t be able to identify a demon by her sass talk. They shouldn’t know how it feels to be pinned to a wall by invisible forces, but that one’s kind of par for the course now, too.

They shouldn’t have lost both parents to the same demon, years apart, before they managed to kill it. And that’s it, really, that right there: the framework on which to hang all the other crap.

Shouldn’t have happened. But it did. All of it did.

 

6\. 

Sometimes the hunt is easy, and that’s kind of nice. Sometimes it’s brutally difficult, and they scrape through on brains and guts and skill and sheer bullheaded brute strength, and they get it done, and it’s really good.

Maybe they don’t even break anything. Maybe nobody needs stitches, or triplicate pain meds.

They might take a bit of a break, then; celebrate, almost, though they’d never put it that way, even to themselves. Sam might stop complaining about everything that displeases him. Dean might smile, for real.

They might have a few beers, shoot some pool, not even hustling; just for fun, in the kind of bar where the truckers’ stares will only be about their skill.

Perhaps there will be the usual casual insults, flung back and forth reflexively since childhood, the meaning nothing like the sounds.

_Great hunt, man._

_Right?_

_Couldn’t do this without you._

_Me either._

_Got your back._

_I know._

They can store this one up for the next time, when they need to remember why they’re still here.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [Livejournal](http://chibifrieza.livejournal.com/495787.html). Thank you for reading; comments are appreciated!


End file.
